Peshawar massacre: Pakistan offers £65k bounty to hunt down Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah

The province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, northwestern Pakistan, has offered a 10 million rupee (£65,877) reward in exchange for information that can help locate and arrest a Taliban leader.

The bounty on Mullah Fazlullah, chief of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), was offered a few weeks after the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack on a school in Peshawar that killed 146 people, mainly children.

"The provincial government has set a bounty of RS 10 million for any information/help that can lead to the arrest or killing of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Mullah Fazlullah," a senior official in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government told AFP.

He also said officials in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa prepared a list of 615 high profile militants and offered a collective bounty of RS 760 million (£4,940,825) for information on their whereabouts.

Shortly after the Peshawar attack, Fazlullah released a video in which he explained the reasons behind the massacre.

"If our women and children die as martyrs, your children will not escape," he said. "We will fight against you in such a style that you attack us and we will take revenge on innocents."

It is believed the brutal assault was retaliation for the Pakistani army offensive against the Taliban in Waziristan, after the military allegedly killed civilians in remote areas close to the border with Afghanistan.

Others have suggested that the attack also aimed to send a message to the global recognition of Pakistani schoolgirl activist Malala Yousafzai, who was awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for advocating education for women and children.

Fazlullah, who ordered the killing of Malala in 2012, allegedly released another video in which he is believed to warn that more deaths will follow in another "spectacular" attack.

"Our men attacked the school and killed children of army personnel - not civilians," he said. "They asked about their identity before killing them.

"These people will always be our target and we will kill them in the streets, markets, everywhere.

"If the army knows our situation - then we also know theirs. Army camps everywhere are our targets."

He added: "Were our children not children? Even if the US or Nato comes, we are ready to fight them."

The video, which has not yet been verified, was first reported by the Mirror.